Archive Digger

Social search?

The more people contribute sites, the better the results.

A great look back at how people thought about social search in 2006:

Other start-up efforts include the appropriately named StumbleUpon, which three Canadians designed to cater to habitual Web surfers. Type in a topic and click “Stumble” to randomly be diverted to a site popular with other users.

“It’s more of a recommendation engine than a search engine,” said Garrett Camp, one of StumbleUpon’s founders. “All they really want to do is discover all the best sites up there. Google is still going to remain focused on the task-oriented. StumbleUpon is much more discovery.”

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Social search attempts to let the entire community of users decide. In theory, the best ideas win out in the online marketplace and are less open to manipulation.

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Among the larger search companies, Google recently launched Google Co-op, an information-sharing feature that marks its first major foray into social search. Although the site isn’t fully operational, Google users can see some of the results when they search the main engine on health or travel issues. The results appear as special links at the top.

Shashi Seth, product manager for Google Co-op, said that there always would be a role for traditional search algorithms, and that he didn’t see specialization ever taking away much business from the major companies.

“They’re all very niche plays in the area of search,” Seth said. “We still believe people will find core search fulfilling the bulk of their needs.”

Read ‘Social Search’ via Los Angeles Times, 2006.